Steven Tyler: Getting sober 'saved my life'

Kevin Winter

Steven Tyler has been experiencing a career resurgence since kicking his drug addictions.

Steven Tyler's career is on such an upswing right now, he graces the cover of not one, but two major magazines this week.

The Aerosmith frontman, 63, opened up to both People and Rolling Stone about his topsy-turvy life, including his decades-long problems with drugs and his comeback as a judge on "American Idol."

"I'm really lucky right now," Tyler told Rolling Stone. "I'm on top of the world. I'm Hollywood's little f-----' sweetheart, basically."

It seems that's largely attributable to "Idol," where he's considered as the most entertaining personality on the show in years, surprising both fans and critics who had thought he would be too drugged out or damaged to handle such a high-profile job.

PHOTOS: STARS WHO HAVE GONE TO REHAB

Tyler, who has actually been sober for a year and half, revealed to Rolling Stone that he wasn't the only aging rocker to get caught up in narcotics in recent years.

"It was just like 30 years before," Tyler said, describing an attempted recording session with Joe Perry in 2008, when the pair were too focused on getting high to produce much music.

"I whipped out mine, he whipped out his and we got high together again," Tyler recalled.

But "Joe was high and he couldn't play," he explained. "I couldn't sing, really, because I was snorting everything, and it f---- up your throat. It was the wrong time."

Now Tyler, whose memoir "Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?" comes out May 3, has figured out how to balance his professional responsibilities with his need for an adrenaline rush.

And the credit, he told People, goes to "Idol."

"If you think going out in front of high-def cameras and millions of people I'm not high on adrenaline, you're crazy," he told the magazine.

"I'm stoned when that curtain drops," he said. "I just don't snort the curtain dropping. I don't snort J.Lo either, though I do breathe her in."

Tyler acknowledged to the mag that "left up to my own devices, I probably would have been dead several times over."

COMEBACK KIDS: STARS WHO HAVE REVIVED THEIR CAREERS

In fact, he has no problem owning up to his very wild past.

"The funny thing is that it doesn't matter, really," he told Rolling Stone. "I was using, so what? So what, I don't give a f---."

He added that he could "use next week," but doubts it because he has made so much progress and feels great about it.

"I'm really steeped in my [recovery] program," he explained, "and there's a Monday night meeting I go to here."

"I'm really proud, man, as Anthony Kiedis [of the Red Hot Chili Peppers] says, to ride the sobriety train," he said. "A lot of us are sober and really f------ damn proud of it. And I don't mind. It saved my life. It saved my life."

Pamela Anderson Emma Heming Georgianna Robertson Zooey Deschanel Christina DaRe